September 10thRemain in my love
- by Herb Sawatzky
John 15:9-12 - “As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.”
In John 15, in a passage that is probably quite familiar to many of us, Jesus tells us to “remain in his love”. A very natural question for me is, “what does it mean to remain in Christ’s love?”
The passage seems to answer this question when Jesus immediately says, “If you obey my commands you will remain in my love”, and he very helpfully reduces his commands done to one command: to love one another as Christ has loved us.
All very helpful, isn’t it.
Unfortunately, my own initial, straightforward reading of this passage makes Christ’s love for us sound conditional: if we love one another then we remain in Christ’s love, but if we do not love one another as Christ loved us, then we do not remain in Christ’s love. Our remaining in Christ’s love is conditional on our loving one another. As Christ loved us, no less. That feels not only conditional, it also feels unattainable. Loving others as I love myself is hard enough as it is (with the exception of those days when I do not love myself well at all), but loving others as Christ loved us? I don’t think I can do that.
We are free to love in that our love for one another does not dependant on how people respond
Thankfully there is a lot of scripture that shows and teaches us that God’s love for us is unconditional. I love the way that Philip Yancey put it in ‘What’s so Amazing About Grace?’, “there is nothing we can do to make God love us more… there is nothing we can do to make God love us less…”
So, “remaining in Christ’s love” can’t be conditional: it can’t mean that we need to be good to earn God’s love. It must mean something else.
Soren Kierkegaard, a 19th Century philosopher and Christian thinker makes a remarkable observation in his book, ‘The Works of Love’. He writes that since the command to love one another is a command, we are actually free.
We are free to love in that our love for one another does not dependant on how people respond. We love one another, treating one another with worth and dignity, regardless of people respond.
God’s parental love that nurtures us and tells us that we are worthwhile lovable people worth dying for, that love for us is fully certain.
This is not the case in romantic relationships, or in friendships. In romantic relationships we are completely dependant on how our romantic partner reacts to us. We like them and want them to like us back. We court them in order to win them over, and our attention is on our partner to watch their reactions. Our orientation is towards our romantic partner.
But in the love command, our orientation is not towards other people – we do not remain in their love. In the love command our orientation is towards Christ – we remain in his love.
Romantic love is fundamentally uncertain, but God’s love for us, God’s parental love that nurtures us and tells us that we are worthwhile lovable people worth dying for, that love for us is fully certain.
And because the love command is a command, we love one another not based on how people receive our love; we love because we are focused on the one who gave us the command. And because the one who commands us to love others as He has loved us, does in fact love us – treat us with dignity and worth, we remain in his love: we remain focused on what is important to Christ, allowing his character and person to form and shape ours.
Our love for Christ and our love for others is deeply and intimately interconnected. We can’t love Christ and not love others. And we know that as we love one another, others may not return our love, but God always will.
- Herb Sawatzky is pastor at Bethany Mennonite Church